If you’re against this kind of behavior, you should advocate that Android/iOS are platforms and not products, so that centralized app stores are a medium for developers and not a proprietary product under one company.
I used to think the same thing: first three results or so are always ads, so just ignore. And then recently they’ve changed to be 90% ads even after the initial few. It’s hard to find something that someone hasn’t paid to display :(
I’ve always been amazed by how unusable the play store was. I’d actually like to browse apps sometimes, but it always was choke full of useless ads pushing the worst apps possible. I only go there once every blue moon when I exactly know what I want, download it and get out of there.
I’ll just point out this isn’t only an Android issue.
If there any IT person here who has had to direct an employee to download the Microsoft authenticator app from the iPhone App Store, you’ve almost certainly seen that it promotes a deceptively similar looking authenticator above the Microsoft one, and you have to make sure the user knows not to download it.
Not quite. If your currently connected devices are not (supposedly) compatible because then it will not show up even if it is still on the store.
Google doesnt even tell you that way and you might assume it’s not there.
I tried it multiple times and had no issues installing the apk from apkmirror and using the app.
Yeah, I’ve been geofenced from certain apps for forever for some reason. Google knows I’m German, Google knows I’m in Germany and yet I can’t download the official German gov Covid tracking app because “it isn’t available in your region”. So I’ve gotten quite familiar with the aurora store instead 🤷♂️
No, it did really happen. Usually with apps that didn’t have very high installation counts. I have first hand experience with it as the author and publisher of an app. People could literally search for the exact name of my app and get all kinds of other results, but not my app. I’d have to send them a direct link to the listing.
I think you you have a much more limited perspective that doesn’t hold Google as accountable as many people. Here’s a snippet from an article breaking down the subtleties of the adjustments Google makes re: dark patterns:
Add comment